Why not torture?

[tsig]

Don't you understand that we must shed all of these trappings of freedom and civil liberties in order to secure the safety of our civil society?

/sarcasm

We've must burn the constitution to save it!!

 

[Soapy Sam]

We've must burn the constitution to save it!!

Can't do that. Carbon footprint.

 

[fuelair]

Nonsense. There are situations where torture and murder are understandable, but they are never justified.

Honest,that is just your opinion. Mine is they can be justified and understandable. The recent case with the family where mother and two daughters were killed plus is only one example where the guy getting life in prison should be getting adjustments that would help him realize life in prison is like a year in Disneyland compared to the repair he is getting.

 

[fuelair]

And they say sharia law would never catch on in the west...

Sharia law's problem is the nothings it goes after - it it was applied only to real crimes (rape/murder/torture of innocents) rather than crap (saying bad things about an invisible bearded guy, repudiating a pointless religion, etc.), NO.

 

[I Am The Scum]

Honest,that is just your opinion. Mine is they can be justified and understandable. The recent case with the family where mother and two daughters were killed plus is only one example where the guy getting life in prison should be getting adjustments that would help him realize life in prison is like a year in Disneyland compared to the repair he is getting.

So the suffering of others is your justification?

 

[fuelair]

Then you're the exact moral equivalent of KSM.

No, but you are free to believe otherwise. There actually is good and evil in the world - and the evil forces bad things to happen - but the best of the good work to eliminate it - by any means necessary that causes the least possible harm to the non-evil. And that easily can involve torture.

 

[fuelair]

So the suffering of others is your justification?

And my happiness to take care of: if you are fine with people who rape/murder and torture women, children and others getting at most the rest of their lives in a prison, that's fine. I'm not. I want them to receive terminal education of the finest sort. They get to learn their actions really were disapproved of in a way that concentrates their attention very thoroughly and, at the end of the program, nothing will allow them to do what they did to any other person. I find that a laudable goal, ymmv.

 

[I Am The Scum]

Take pleasure in torturing others who take pleasure in torturing others. Turtles all the way down.

 

[Thunder]

With the news that Bush is justifying Waterboarding again, the question will inevitably rise again.

Why not torture someone if the information will save lives? Have they not shed their rights by committing crime?

have they been convicted of crimes?

what if they have no information that can actually save lives?

I only support water-boarding, of high-value suspects, with a doctor present and for a very limited duration.

and btw, even convicted felons have civil and human rights.

 

[Whiplash]

Yes, that's kind of the whole point. It should be pretty clear that the investigator want to hear the truth.

But seriously, I understand the problem, but have a hard time believing there are no situations where torture can get you reliable information.

Me either, but whenever I said as much in the past, I got serious derision and implications of living in a fantasy world of the show 24.

Sometimes people are far too absolutist and idealistic about what they believe. They allow absolutely zero compromise. It's when they can't actually justify that position that it concerns me. Where I think they are just clinging too much to that ideal as some kind of sacred cow that cannot be challenged.

 

[Dragoonster]

What about torturing someone in a effort to save the lives of untold numbers of innocent men women and children?

Torture should always be illegal. One benefit of this is that in cases such as you bring up, only those individuals who believe torture is justified will do it, and only in such extreme cases. They will, by law, be prosecuted after the fact for torture, and rightfully so even if they "save" an untold number of lives.

I think it's extremely cowardly to argue that we should torture other humans and not be charged with it. If it's such an incredible, dire circumstance, surely the jail-time served by the torturer(s) are worth it to save an untold number of lives. Obviously the torture inflicted on another person is.

Seems some championing torture want to be able to torture and not face any repercussions themselves. Again, cowardly, and not willing to stand up to principles. Let's take a radical hypothetical--if torturing yourself would save untold number of lives, would you do it? And the less hypothetical--if going to jail for life would save untold lives, would you do it?

 

[I Am The Scum]

Me either, but whenever I said as much in the past, I got serious derision and implications of living in a fantasy world of the show 24.

Sometimes people are far too absolutist and idealistic about what they believe. They allow absolutely zero compromise. It's when they can't actually justify that position that it concerns me. Where I think they are just clinging too much to that ideal as some kind of sacred cow that cannot be challenged.

So are you arguing that because we can conceive of a possibility, that we should operate as though the possibility is true?

 

[theprestige]

The popular anti-torture argument that the victim say anything at all to please the torturer, is, as far as I can tell, the most perfect pro-torture argument possible.

I will explain, but first let me make an important distinction: For this very reason, I think torture should never be used to obtain a confession. Regimes that practice this kind of torture are despicable in the extreme, and deserve nothing but the enmity of the civilized world.

Further, information obtained by torture should never be admissible in court, for the same obvious reason.

However, torture to obtain information is different, and if it is true that the victim will say anything at all to please the torturer, then it is obvious that torture can be an effective and reliable tool for obtaining true information.

To begin with, if the torturer begins by asking for information that he already knows to be true from other sources, it quickly becomes evident that only the truth will make the torturer happy. Desperately inventing falsehoods will not serve. Only by desperately "inventing" the truth does the victim earn respite.

So far, so horrible. But a baseline has been established: We know that torture can be used to reliably obtain true information.

If the torturer then continues by asking for testable propositions, again the situation quickly becomes clear: Only by desperately inventing testable propositions can the victim earn respite.

A further--and necessary refinement--is to demand testable propositions that, when tested evaluate as true.

And there you have it: If the victim will say anything at all to please the torturer, then all the torturer has to do is make it clear that only testable propositions that evaluate to true will satisfy, for their torture to obtain truthful information. Q.E.D.

The rest is simply a matter of good judgement, restraint, and oversight in the application of torture. These are certainly problematic points, but no more so than the problems of government exercising good judgement, restraint and oversight in all the other matters of life and death for which we happily grant them authority over us.

If you're going to abolish torture over concerns about government restraint and judgement and oversight, you should probably abolish most other government functions as well.

 

[I Am The Scum]

You're still not showing evidence that torture is an effective method of deriving true information.

I, for one, have never granted that the victim of torture will say whatever it takes to make it end.

 

[nvidiot]

Surely the Gestapo or Stazi did some analysis on whether torture was a reasonably accurate method of gleaning information at one stage or another? Are there any studies done on the subject?

Dtugg I must admit I'm a little dissappointed in the view of human rights and treatment of prisoners that you're taking. Part of the reason we don't torture prisoners/captives/enemy combatants should be that we don't want to sink to their level. Once you start inflicting pain to obtain information that information must be regarded as suspect. Would you find it appropriate or justifiable for North Korea to torture a US soldier if they reasonably suspected that they had information relating to an invasion of NK? That's a ticking time bomb example I don't think you'll approve of.

I suppose my point is that if torture is justified in any circumstance, it should be justified in most of them. And I doubt that this is true. If torture yeilds accurate information in ticking time bomb situations (anyone know of an actual example of this?) then why not use it on murder suspects? Or burglars? They've abandoned their rights haven't they?

 

[Thunder]

torture me and I'll tell you anything you want to hear.

I'll make up stuff if I think it will make u leave me alone.

 

[Darth Rotor]

A long time ago I was watching a program on ethics on PBS.

At which point one need not read the rest of your post.

I thought that if he sank in the pond, he was not a terrorist.

Another apologist chimes in. Not well played.
Now, read the best post in this thread. It is written by Tragic Monkey.

I would say the worst effect of torture is to the torturer himself. Once you let your hands get a little bloody, then what's the harm in doing it again? Going a little bit further? You're already bad, you've already gone that far, so why make moral objections now? Some kinds of dirt don't wash off, and once someone--someone with power--decides they're already irredeemably dirty, then they have nothing left to lose. I'm sure most of them justify it to themselves--it was necessary, for the greater good, etc, etc--and maybe even they believe it. It's certainly easier for us to think that torturers must be mad, flawed, somehow different from the rest of us because we'd never do that kind of thing. But they're not. Everybody's capable of that, given the right circumstances. The question is, can you stop yourself from doing it once? And if you did it once, can you stop yourself doing it again? Can you live with your actions, or lack of actions? People can recover from being tortured, but I doubt they ever recover from being torturers.

You're still not showing evidence that torture is an effective method of deriving true information.

Irrelevant. If one only uses what is gleaned from torture as a source of info, one is bound to cock up frequently, as the immensely variable reliability of that info received is reasonably well agreed among the professionals who have actually tried to do precisely that.

But, as A source of info, which is balanced against other sources, it may now and again have value. IMO, rare is the case, and now that we are to that point, read TM's post yet again.

DR

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Would you find it appropriate or justifiable for North Korea to torture a US soldier if they reasonably suspected that they had information relating to an invasion of NK?

What the barbarians in our midst usually fail to grasp is that the sole point of the treaties against torture and cruel and degrading treatment, biological and chemical weapons, illegal wars, human rights abuses and so forth is that you agree not to engage in the forbidden actions even if it would be really useful to you to do so.

There's no point at all in a treaty that forbids something you would never want to do anyway, like a treaty against giving all your soldiers pop guns and painting big flourescent targets on their uniforms.

When barbarians controlled Japan and Germany it took a world war to destroy them, and fortunately for a few decades people remembered why we should never go down those paths. However the torturers are crawling back out from under their rocks and I think it's the job of our generation to remind them why we made those treaties in the first place.

 

[Darth Rotor]

When barbarians controlled Japan and Germany it took a world war to destroy them, and fortunately for a few decades people remembered why we should never go down those paths. However the torturers are crawling back out from under their rocks and I think it's the job of our generation to remind them why we made those treaties in the first place.

Kevin, what was the point in Godwinning this thread?

You had an interesting line going in re treaties, and why people/governments actually sign them, and they you pissed it away.

Pity.

 

[Dragoonster]

Right on Kevin. It's (imo) akin to those who want due process and other Constitutional rights suspended, being that we're in such "dire" times. The point of the Constitution is more for times like this than "safer" times. It's a test of our (just speaking as an American) faith in the foundation of our laws. If any Amendment can be ignored, even once, they all should be ignored whenever some politician/warmongerer/peacemonger decides its warranted.

No. The Constitution, and laws against torture, don't have "except when x..." clauses for a very good reason. There is no circumstance when it should be LEGAL to flout them. Circumstances where it should be MORAL? That's up to each citizen or agent of government--but if he feels that way and violates the law to do so, he still needs to be subject to that law's penalties.